Alexis Ohanian, the founder and former CEO of Reddit, stepped down from his position on the company's board Friday as the U.S. roils with nationwide protests against police brutality after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man.

Ohanian is calling on the company he founded to fill his position with a black board member, a high-profile step for a company with its own rocky track record around issues of race.

"I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now," Ohanian said in his announcement. "To everyone fighting to fix our broken nation: do not stop."

The liberal news site Slate is facing intense backlash for claiming that "violence" is an "important tool for protests."

While some reports have either downplayed or even defended the violence that taken place in recent days, no defense was bolder than Slate's, whose account tweeted on Wednesday, "Non-violence is an important tool for protests, but so is violence."

Included in the tweet is a link to a 24-minute audio analysis explaining the "history of violent protest."

"Big structural change in America doesn't happen without violence," read the subheadline of the linked article.

The leftist-terrorist organization Antifa deceptively presents itself as the militant vanguard of America's anti-racism protests, but in reality it employs the deeply racist tactic of trying to lead African-Americans to their slaughter in order to spark a "race war" that they believe could serve as the catalyst for carrying out their envisaged "revolution", which they tacitly regard as an ideological end that "justifies" their aforesaid means.

Background Briefing

Antifa is the talk of every town in America after Trump publicly declared his plans to officially designate it as a terrorist group in response to the network's role in carrying out acts of urban terrorism all throughout the country over the past week. For those who aren't familiar with the author's analysis of the HybridWar of Terror on America, they're requested to at the very least skim through one, some, or all three of his related works on the topic so as to better understand his perspective prior to proceeding to the rest of the present piece:

Ruptly stringer Nabil Hassan al-Qaichi was shot by unidentified people near his home in Aden.

This week, the Russian foreign language broadcaster confirmed that unidentified people had shot and killed Ruptly stringer Nabil Hasan al-Quality near his home in Aden on June 2. The Committee to Protect Journalists and UNESCO condemned the murder, and urged for a thorough probe into the photojournalist's death.

RT Arabic stringer Salah Al-Aklu and his family will be evacuated from Yemen after receiving death threats, Sputnik and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has indicated.

"The threats began after a friend and colleague who collaborated with our Ruptly video agency was shot dead outside his home in Yemen a few days ago," she wrote, referring to the killing of al-Quaety, a photojournalist working with a number of news organizations, including Ruptly, Agence France-Presse, and others.

Simonyan thanked Russia's foreign ministry and the Russian ambassador in Yemen, saying they are helping in the urgent evacuation of Al-Aklu and his family from the war-torn country.

Comment: Thousands turned out to mourn the slain journalist in Aden on Thursday:

The mayor of Minneapolis sobbed as he knelt beside George Floyd's casket ahead of a somber memorial in the city on Thursday.

Mayor Jacob Frey was seen breaking down in tears, his body heaving, as he knelt with one hand on the casket of Floyd, 46, whose death at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer last week has sparked widespread protests.

The emotional moment took place in the minutes leading up to the service at North Central University, where Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a fiery eulogy, calling on black people to demand: "Get your knees off our necks."

"It's time for us to step up in George's name and say, 'get your knees of our necks,'" Sharpton said.

Comment: As one might expect, the Twitterati aren't buying into the show of tears:

Thousands have descended on central London to protest the death of George Floyd. Defying the government's lockdown rules, the demonstrators marched on Parliament Square.

Nearly two weeks after Floyd died under the boot of police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, protests against police brutality have spread across the world. Far away from the riots and arson engulfing the US, crowds of demonstrators packed the rainy streets of London on Saturday to show solidarity with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement in the US.

Comment: So much for anti-social distancing! Similar rallies have taken place in Sydney and Melbourne:

In Sydney, footage shows a massive crowd assembled outside the city's town hall. The gathering was ruled lawful by the New South Wales appeals court at the last minute, despite restrictions on assembly due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And things have predictably turned ugly:

In Germany, protestors have turned out in Cologne and Berlin, although many are still wearing masks:

President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region.

A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county's death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.

Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.

Comment: Considering the global manipulation of Covid-19 infection and mortality rates, one might question the claims that millions are dying from the virus. Brazil's population has been hard hit by poverty and hunger which has only been exacerbated by the lockdown. It may be for this reason that people are succumbing to diseases which could be from a multitude of factors having little to do with Covid-19.

Two Buffalo police officers were arraigned on Saturday on felony assault charges after a viral video showed them shoving an elderly protestor who remains critically injured after falling at a march against racism.

Officers Aaron Torgalski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32, were part of a unit in tactical gear enforcing an 8 p.m. curfew on Thursday during the protest involving long-time community activist Martin Gugino, 75, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said in a statement.

"The two defendants, who are Buffalo Police officers, pushed a protestor outside of City Hall, causing him to fall and hit his head on the sidewalk," Flynn said.

The growing trend of kneeling to show solidarity with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement has apparently been adopted by banker Jamie Dimon, triggering an avalanche of disbelief and mockery on social media.

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase was photographed taking a knee in front of a large bank vault on Friday, sparking speculation that he was expressing support for anti-racism protests that have spread across the United States.

His bank declined to confirm whether there was a deeper meaning behind the photograph, but Dimon had previously voiced sympathy for the demonstrations, stating that Chase was "committed to fighting against racism and discrimination wherever and however it exists."

Comment: This is simply boilerplate morality: all appearance, no substance. Virtue isn't virtue if you parade it around like some trendy new haircut. If you want to be a conformist, mindless automaton, by all means, join the latest virtue signalling fad. Just know it's meaningless, and tools like Jamie Dimon and Justin Trudeau aren't demonstrating a shred of actual character: they're just copying other people who are copying other people to show they're all on the ideologically correct side of the fence. The fact that such blatant mindlessness and conformity is mistaken as an expression of some kind of heightened moral development says a lot. This is the lowest form of virtue possible.

Another example:

This idiocy is going on everywhere, like any strong social contagion:

This guy knows what's going on. If you don't watch anything else, watch this heartfelt message from man who seems to have real character:

Lightning struck the Washington Monument Thursday night, igniting and lighting up the sky in the D.C. area, a new viral video clip shows.

What happened:

WUSA 9's Sky Cam captured video footage of lightning striking the Washington Monument with a bolt of lightning. Other flashes of light occur nearby in the moments right after.

This is somewhat normal. According to Atlas Obscura, lightning often strikes the 555-foot monument. In fact, the solid aluminum capstone melted about half of a year after it was installed in December 1884.

More lightning strikes

Two National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., were hospitalized Thursday after lightning struck the area where they were posted, according to NBC News. The location wasn't too far removed from the White House.